News Briefs

8/7/2012, Av 19, 5772

Philanthropist Sami Rohr Passes Away

Florida-based real-estate mogul Sami Rohr, one of the Chabad Lubavitch hassidic movement's largest benefactors in recent history, passed away, Sunday at the age of 86. His funeral was scheduled for Tuesday morning on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, not far from his philanthropist wife Charlotte.

According to Chabad's COL LIVE Website, the German-born, former Colombian Jewish investor gave tens of millions of dollars to Chabad to establish outposts throughout the former Soviet Union, on college campuses and in remote spots around the world. Other sources put his philanthropy at around a quarter of a billion dollars. His family underwrites the salaries of some 500 Chabad emissaries and operates a foundation specifically to help Chabad rabbis on American college campuses to construct buildings. In April, Rohr participated in the inauguration of the Feldinger Chabad Jewish Centre in Basel, which he financially supported. When he escaped from the Nazis as a 16--year-old,prior to the outbreak of World War II, he found refuge with the Feldinger family in Basel.